“Where do you live?” I asked, slipping on the uniform shirt. It felt incredibly soft and comfortable. Would anyone notice if I took an extra uniform for myself? I didn’t have many clothes at the moment, and it would come in handy.
“With my parents,” Grace replied. “I’d love to live alone, but London is too expensive, and I’d rather save until I know what I want to do.”
I untied my boots so I could swap my jeans for the trousers. “Do you get on with your parents?”
“Yeah, they’re great. But it’s a bit crammed in the house with the five of us. I have two siblings, Amy and Jason. Amy is my twin sister, and Jason is fifteen.” Grace’s voice had softened. It was clear how much she loved them, even if she craved more space for herself. “Do you have siblings?”
“No.”
“And your parents?” Grace asked.
I pulled on the new trousers and wondered how much of the truth I could tell Grace without breaking my promise to Henry. “My mum died at the end of last year. And I’ve never met my dad.”
Her eyes widened. “So you’re all alone?”
I straightened up and tensed my shoulders. It was reflexive, a gesture intended to make me look more resilient. “I got used to it,” I lied.
In reality, I’d just learned to ignore my feelings. Randell had left me no other choice. I was still grappling with the fact that my mum was dead when he’d thrown me out, leaving me to suddenly navigate a harsh new reality. I hadn’t had a second to grieve or come to terms with my loneliness. I’d found myself in survival mode, where I’d been for the last few months. I could feel that mode deactivating now, slowly but surely. Not just because of my new sleeping arrangement, but also because of Henry, and people like Giulia and Grace, who had welcomed me so warmly to The Darlington.
19
Hot. Hotter. Ethan Darlington. What Does the Coveted Bachelor’s Dream Woman Look Like? We Know!
Shout Magazineheadline
Kate
“We have to be as discreet as possible when we clean the rooms so we don’t disturb the guests. They deposit their keys at reception when they leave the hotel, and as soon as that happens, we get a notification,” Grace explained, showing me her tablet. “If you have time to clean the room, you press the green button. And we also get notified when the guests go down to the restaurant.”
“So you only clean the rooms when there’s no one in them?”
“We try, but it doesn’t always work out that way, of course,” Grace answered. “When you click on the room number, you can see who’s staying there. Remember their names, because it’s company policy that we greet every guest personally when we run into them. And under the name, you’ll see a list of special requests, if there are any. Most of them are relatively normal—they might have a preference for a particular colour of bed linen, for example—but sometimes we get some pretty weird stuff. We once had a guestwho wanted a different colour of lightbulb every day. On Wednesdays, he wanted purple; yellow on Thursdays; and red on Fridays.”
“And you do it?” I asked, amazed.
“Of course,” Grace said with amusement, and pressed a button on the tablet to dim the display. “We do everything for our guests. They spend a lot of money to stay here. If I’m honest, with prices like that, you’re not just paying for the room. You’re paying for the service, for integrity, for privacy. We get a lot of celebrities and politicians here. Don’t share their special requests with anyone. That includes friends.”
It was an easy promise to make, because I had no friends. The only person I’d talked to in the last few weeks was Mary from lost and found.
After Grace had explained how the tablet worked, we started cleaning. Every day, each room at The Darlington was cleaned as thoroughly as if a new guest were arriving. We aired the room, straightened the curtains, emptied the bins, made up the bed, replaced the towels, vacuumed, restocked the minibar and the toiletries in the bathroom, cleaned the mirrors, and polished the surfaces until they gleamed. Each room took at least half an hour, maybe longer, but The Darlington prioritised quality over speed.
With every room we cleaned, it became clearer to me that Henry really hadn’t been lying when he’d said I was staying in the least glamorous room in the hotel. The rooms I cleaned with Grace were all quite a lot bigger and even more luxurious. A few even had fireplaces. But no two rooms were the same; each was uniquely furnished and decorated. In some rooms, shades of pink and purple dominated, while others featured accents of blue, orange, or green. We even cleaned a suite with a separate living and dining area.
Grace and I talked nonstop as we worked. She raved about the hotel’s indoor pool and about the rooftop bar where a summer party for employees was held every year. But she also talked about how the mood had shifted since the first allegations against Richard Darlington had become public at the beginning of the year. Hardly anyone at the hotel believed he was innocent. There’d been enough conversations among staff since then, with female employees sharing stories of uncomfortable encounters with Henry’s dad.
Grace had fortunately never experienced harassment herself, but the knowledge that Richard was capable of it, coupled with the bad press, still affected her. There’d been several resignations in the past few months—staff left both in solidarity with the victims and because they feared that being associated with the hotel could harm their careers. Even if the court declared Richard innocent, the allegations and the memory of them would linger. They were a permanent stain on The Darlington’s otherwise spotless reputation.
Grace’s work schedule eventually led us to the hotel’s private penthouses on the top floor.
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Grace said after we’d finished with Henry’s apartment. It had felt strange to be there, as if I were invading his privacy, especially when we’d cleaned his bedroom. Grace had assured me it was OK, but I’d felt an overwhelming urge to ask Henry for permission to be there. We now stood before the door of another apartment. Since Logan didn’t live at the hotel and Grace didn’t have Richard and Amanda Darlington’s apartment on her rota today, this had to be Ethan’s suite.
“What for?” I asked.
“That it’s not total mayhem in there.”
Grace unlocked the door with the golden ID card that gave her access to every room on the private floor. The stench of alcohol and the acrid smell of weed hit me as soon as the door opened. I wrinkled my nose. I hated the smell—Randell and my mum had smoked weed together sometimes. In comparison to some of the other stuff they’d taken, joints were harmless, but in general, it had been enough to turn me against drugs completely. The bitter, slightly rotten smell brought back a lot of unpleasant memories.
The state of Ethan’s apartment was worlds apart from Henry’s, which had been immaculate. It looked like there’d been a rave here over the weekend. Nothing seemed to be where it belonged. There were cups and bottles everywhere, crockery-laden trolleys in the middle of the room, and several pizza boxes lying around. Glow sticks were scattered across the floor, and I even came across a shoe and a pair of boxer shorts someone had obviously lost on the way to the bedroom.
